Happy New Year

You know, I've never been one to make New Years resolutions, probably because if it was important enough to make then I should have been doing it all along.  I do always, however, wonder what the next year will bring, and I ponder over what I have learned from the months that have just passed by so quickly.  After reading a recent email I have come to the same conclusion as it, I am not the best at practically everything, and it has been that way all of my life.  I’m not a bad writer, but I’m not great, I’m not a bad cook, but I’m no chef.  My home is fairly clean and organized, but there is always fur on something, and some closet that needs reorganizing. There are days when I feel like I am the perfect wife, but there are more days when I am not. Do I make a resolution, which I know I probably won’t be able to uphold, or am I destined to be my same old imperfect self who can never seem to change?  After fifty-one years how different am I now then I was then as a girl of ten, a woman of twenty, and now?  Have I grown, changed, altered, learn to go right when everything else is saying go left? As the years progress it seems there is always something ending and something beginning in our lives, good and bad.  I guess the trick is in the learning to accept it all for what the Lord intended it to be and move on with more clarity.  As Jeremiah 29:11 says, “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” I know this to be true, but the Lord expects us to do our part in the coming new year. Perhaps my New Years resolution then will be to make a resolution. I suppose I can resolve to be the person the Lord intended me to be and work towards that goal. So, as Bishop John H. Vincent quoted, “I will this day try to live a simple sincere and serene life repelling promptly every thought of discontent, anxiety, discouragement, impurity and self-seeking cultivating cheerfulness magnanimity, charity, and the habit of holy silence exercising economy in expenditure, carefulness in conversation diligence in appointed service, fidelity to every trust and a child-like trust in God.” This is a hefty feat to achieve.  I pray we are all up to the task in the year of Our Lord, 2012!